To manage a system effectively, you might focus on the interactions of the parts rather than their behavior taken separately.

A bureaucrat is one who has the power to say "no" but none to say "yes."

Errors of omission, lost opportunities, are generally more critical than errors of commission. Organizations fail or decline more frequently because of what they did not do than because of what they did.

Most corporate mission statements are worthless. They consist largely of pious platitudes such as: "We will hold ourselves to the highest standards of professionalism and ethical behavior." They often formulate necessities as objectives; for example, "to achieve sufficient profit." This is like a person saying his mission is to breathe sufficiently.

Every problem interacts with other problems and is therefore part of a set of interrelated problems, a system of problems. I choose to call such a system a mess.

Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. I call such situations messes. Problems are extracted from messes by analysis. Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes.

For me there has never been an amount of money that makes it worth doing something that is not fun.